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I want to get out of
that book for a second

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and go into something else.

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While coming across on
the Sun City Express

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yesterday from Phoenix--

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it's one of those situations
where there are only four people

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on the bus, and you're just
all comfortable and cozy,

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and a certain point, I'm looking
out at this incredible landscape

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that you-- you know,
you see all the time,

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so it doesn't look
like much to you--

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but week before
last, I was in Egypt.

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And the week after
that, I was in Israel,

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and so being here in
the Arizona desert

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was like a continuation
of where I'd been.

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I mean, very similar
in the landscapes.

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And so I was struck by it,
and I wrote a crazy, kind

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of spontaneous poem,
which I doctored up

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a little bit this morning.

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But this was written
yesterday, coming in,

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and they very kindly
printed it up for me

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over at the Poetry Center.

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So this is raw,
and it's called--

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probably get other poets
coming through doing this,

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and in fact, Alison was
talking about trying

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to do an anthology of
these kinds of ephemeral,

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visiting poets' poems--

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this is called "Desert
Footage: Three Dissolves."

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"One-- crossing, we arrive.

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We change up.

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We come back inside the original
oasis, that quivering water,

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its cool-holed message, no
mirage, a power mirror, ours.

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Two-- brushes with
sages, lifetime leads,

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unload, unjam right here,
where now don't need no start,

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don't need no count, where lust
like dusty first impressions

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suns up, suns down,
and falls away

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by twists and blazing turns.

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Stopped coal by night,
excitement slows.

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Zigzag-- the jazz of cactus fuzz
and insect buzz, and lizards

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whizzing every which way
nowhere, and buzzards minding

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their own lazy business zooms,
the horizon a shining rim shot.

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Three-- bowled over by blue,
by light, and cooling cloud,

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desert can reach its peaks
and depths, its flats

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and sharps with singular,
insular pleasure.

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And treasures we
always haul back

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lack the track
record market value

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wealth wish we've been
air-conditioned to cherish.

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In malls and designer back
alleys of urgent dreaming,

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desire grinds, and bumps,
and tallies, and bills,

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but back here at home,
back smack in the desert,

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silence and space ease in
and replace, get and gimme,

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and mucho and gotcha,
or do we get erased,

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who thrill of peace
in thrones out here,

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where water walks and
kings don't mean a thing."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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